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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: I burnt out at EAG. Let's talk about it., published by Alastair Fraser-Urquhart on April 23, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I spent my weekend at EAG London 2022, my fourth EA conference so far. Like always, it was an intense ride, but unlike always, I ran out of road at the end of it. I burnt out. My plan was to start EAG on the Friday, spend my time with lots of 1-1s, and then on Monday morning, head off on a retreat. Up until Sunday, everything was pretty good - I had a fun and productive time, and generally everything was panning out like the other conferences I'd been to. My first major mistake was on Saturday evening. I was massively tired when I got home, quite late after a bit of an afterparty, and because of this, forgot to set my alarm. I woke up really late on Sunday and realised that I'd missed some stuff already, and hadn't even left the house. But instead of getting up, I laid in bed and thought about quitting EA, saying to my boyfriend I wasn't going to go to any more of the conference, and generally panicking. I was pretty much over this by the time I got on the tube, but the first big red flag missed. However, the rest of Sunday was pretty good as well. The first 1-1 I actually turned up to was amazing - like emotional CPR - which is good, because otherwise I might well have just gone home, unable to do the rest of the conference. In fact, by the end of the day, I felt pretty great. I'd had a couple of really amazing 1-1s, been convinced on a very important issue that previously I'd been deliberately not confronting (getting an ADHD assessment), and those Beyond Burgers! I even ended up going to an afterparty (the Repugnant Conclusion, in case you're wondering), in pretty good spirits. When I got there, it wasn't obvious at all that there was a party going on inside, and I didn't want to ring the wrong bell at 1030. Normally, I'd have gone home awkwardly at this point (I spent about five minutes considering this), but eventually just rang the guy throwing the party and he let me in - not something I'd have done if I didn't feel really excited to do; and the party was spectacular. Just before I left the party I realised three things: I hadn't even packed for the retreat, I'd have to wake up at 8, and it was already 1am. That's when I decided to go home, and my feelings started going downhill. That meant going outside before the Uber actually got there was a big mistake, and to cut a long story short, I ended up waiting around half an hour for the bus home. The wait was not at all good, and my feelings really started running away with me. By the time the bus actually got there, the thought of going on the retreat the next morning was literally filling me with dread - it was too much effort, there would be too many people, and it would just be so hard. I rang one of my friends, also going on the retreat, distraught. There were two basic choices - go on the retreat, or not go. The trouble was, neither of them worked in my head -unstoppable force meets immovable object. Even though I had no words for how much I did not want to go, not going was, in my mind, a total failure, to be avoided at all costs. This became the crux of my burnout. Almost as soon as I got home, I finally broke down completely, and had a really bad night. It took till the next morning to send the "pulling out of the retreat" message , and it was genuinely one of the most difficult things I've ever done (I woke up at 8, didn't send the message till past 930, wrote in a separate app, and turned notifications off for Messenger before sending, so I didn't have to even see the reply). At some point in the morning I locked myself in the spare room, and didn't come out until the next day. Not pretty. I hope I don't regret putting this on the internet. This appears to be a symptom of A...